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Label:John La Farge was one of the first American artists to respond to Japanese art. Inspired by the flowing contours, asymmetrical compositions, and color harmonies of the East, he fused these elements with Western artistic motifs, reminiscent of renaissance painting. La Farge, who invented modern opalescent glass, called this window a “picture work in glass.”

Additional information:

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

One of the most renowned late nineteenth-century American artists, John La Farge began his career as a painter but is best remembered for his elaborate, richly colored stained-glass windows. As a friend of architects and sculptors who developed the style known as the American Renaissance for its borrowings from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian art, La Farge designed entire decorative schemes in painting, sculpture, and stained glass for many of the major architectural projects of his day, often in competition with his better-known contemporary Louis Comfort Tiffany. La Farge considered Spring his masterpiece in stained glass, and technically the window is a tour de force: the face and torso of the young woman are painted and fired on the largest single sheet of glass ever used in a stained-glass window, and the rich colors, including the milky, opalescent glass that was La Farge's invention, are his most varied and intricately designed. Few other works better express the combination of allegorical subject, realistic treatment of the figure, historical associations, and rich effect that characterized the American Renaissance style. Darrel Sewell, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 297.

* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit.